Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: January 2026: Atrocities 658-730

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

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ATROCITY KEY

– Authoritarianism
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

December 2025

Main Index

Trump’s first term

January 2026

1. – January 1, 2026 – In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said that he takes a higher dose of aspirin than his doctors have recommended, blaming the higher dose for his visible hand bruises. He stated, “They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart. I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?” Trump gave the Journal the impromptu interview after learning they were working on a story about his health. Immediately after the piece was published, Trump lashed out on Truth Social, insisting that he was in “PERFECT HEALTH.” The Journal piece highlighted growing concerns about Trump’s health, like the swelling in his legs and his apparent dozing off during public events.
   
   
2. – January 2, 2026 – Trump said that the United States would come to the aid of protesters in Iran if the government there used lethal force against them. The move was a sharp escalation of rhetoric after days of widespread demonstrations against the Iranian government. On Truth Social, Trump declared, “If Iran violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on social media that Mr. Trump “should know that US interference would destabilize the entire region and destroy America’s interests… The American people should know—Trump started this adventurism.”
   
   
3. – January 3, 2026 – In a lightning military strike, the US captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The attack followed months of escalating pressure by the Trump administration, which had built up naval forces in the waters off South America and carried out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump spoke about the immediate future of Venezuela, saying, “We’re going to run it, essentially.” He said Venezuela’s oil business “has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time. We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, going to spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” He added, "We’re going to get back our oil.” The deadly attack on Venezuela was carried out without congressional approval.
   
   
   US Strikes Venezuela and Captures Maduro and His Wife. (AP)
   
   
4. – January 3, 2026 – Trump recirculated a false claim about the assassination of former Minnesota Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman. Trump’s post was the latest in his focused effort to politically damage Governor Tim Walz. The post suggested that Walz played a role in the fatal attack. Walz wrote on X, “Dangerous, depraved behavior from the sitting president of the United States. In covering for an actual serial killer, he is going to get more innocent people killed. America is better than this.” Prosecutors said the shooting suspect, Vance Boelter, visited the homes of other Democratic lawmakers. Authorities said he was carrying a list of politicians and other organization leaders who favored abortion rights.
   
   
5. – January 3, 2026 – Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos died at the hands of guards in an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas. Lunas Campos’s family said that a fellow detainee saw the guards choke him to death, according to a legal filing they submitted. Another detainee said he saw Lunas Campos struggle with the guards before he died, the filing said. Both witnesses have since been given deportation notices. ICE officials offered a different account of Campos’s death. They said that he had died after “experiencing medical distress,” but after The Washington Post reported the family’s claims about the death, a Department of Homeland Security official said that Lunas Campos had died by suicide. Several weeks later, an autopsy report revealed that Lunas Campos died by asphyxiation and ruled his death a homicide.
   
   
6. – January 4, 2026 – Following the US capture of Nicolás Maduro, Trump threatened Columbia, Mexico, Cuba, Iran, and Greenland. The president described Colombia as “very sick” and said a military operation against Colombia “sounds good to me.” He also said he was “going to have to do something” to Mexico, that Cuba was “ready to fall,” and that Iran was “going to get hit very hard by the United States” if they “start killing people like they have in the past.” “We need Greenland, from the standpoint of national security,” he added.
   
   
7. – January 4, 2026 – In an interview with The Atlantic, Trump threatened Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodríguez. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” said Trump. The president’s comments came after Rodríguez defiantly declared Venezuela was “ready to defend our natural resources,” demanded Maduro’s return, and said Venezuela would “never be a colony ever again.”
   
   
8. – January 4, 2026 – The Guardian reported that thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, the deadliest year since 2004. Seven of the deaths occurred in December alone, when the Trump administration detained a record number.
   
   
9. – January 5, 2026 – At an emergency UN meeting, American allies criticized the US incursion into Venezuela and the capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro as violations of international law. The deputy French ambassador Jay Dharmadhikari, said the raid “chips away at the very foundation of international order” and “runs counter to the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force.” US allies Bahrain, Brazil, and Mexico also said the Trump administration violated the UN charter. “I am deeply concerned about the possible intensification of instability in the country, the potential impact on the region, and the precedent it may set for how relations between and among states are conducted,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres.
   
   
10. – January 5, 2026 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth began proceedings against Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, that could result in a demotion of Kelly’s military retirement rank and cuts to his military pension. The proceedings were retaliation for a video Kelly released in November that called on service members to refuse illegal orders, an action that Hegseth called “seditious.” Hegseth also issued a “formal Letter of Censure” accusing Kelly of engaging in “a sustained pattern of public statements” over a six-month period that characterized lawful military operations as “illegal.” In the letter, Hegseth cited Kelly’s criticisms of him for firing generals and admirals and Kelly’s accusations that Hegseth had committed war crimes. Kelly responded, “My rank and retirement are things that I earned through my service and sacrifice for this country… Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way. It’s outrageous, and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”
    
    
11. – January 5, 2026 – The CDC announced an overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule, recommending that children get vaccines for eleven diseases rather than the previously recommended eighteen. Health and Human Services officials said the changes would restore trust in public health that was lost during the Covid pandemic. However, many doctors and public health experts rejected those claims. “The abrupt change to the entire US childhood vaccine schedule is alarming, unnecessary, and will endanger the health of children in the United States,” said Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease professor at the University of Washington. “It’s really the most significant weakening of childhood vaccine recommendations, I would say, in modern American history,” added Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious diseases specialist at Stanford Medicine.
    
    
12. – January 5, 2026 – During a CNN interview, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller mocked international agreements, claimed the U.S. had the right to annex Greenland, and said that the US was running Venezuela. “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” In the same interview, Miller also asserted that the US was running Venezuela. “We set the terms and conditions,” Miller added. “We have a complete embargo on all their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”
    
    
    “Obviously, Greenland Should Be Part of the United States”: Stephen Miller Doubles Down. (New York Post)
    
    
13. – January 5, 2026 – Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, 42, died in ICE custody after being treated at HCA Houston Healthcare in Conroe, Texas. ICE claimed the cause of death was heart-related issues. After his arrest on December 23, Núñez was placed in the Montgomery ICE Processing Center and then the Joe Corley ICE Processing Center, which are both operated by the GEO Group, Inc. In December, three immigrants died over a four-day period at GEO-operated ICE facilities. “My brother was a person full of life and hope, always fighting for his well-being and that of our family,” Núñez’s brother wrote in Spanish on a GoFundMe. “Sadly, his life was cut short due to the lack of adequate medical care while he was in ICE custody.”
    
    
14. – January 6, 2026 – Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz, 68, died in ICE custody after being treated at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio, California. ICE claimed the cause of death was heart-related issues. Yáñez-Cruz, a grandfather who had lived in the US for twenty-six years, complained of chest pains and shortness of breath during his detention, and his family questioned whether he had received adequate medical care. “There needs to be an investigation because this is not normal. He started having symptoms weeks ago; they could have done something,” said Yáñez-Cruz’s daughter, Josselyn Yanez.
    
    
15. – January 6, 2026 – ICE detained Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano, 10, and her mother, Rosa Elena Caisaguano Cajilema, were on their way to Elizabeth’s school and were taken to a detention center in Texas. During the arrest, Elizabeth called her father, Luis Zuna, and told him the agents were taking her to the school, but both the child and her mother were gone when Zuna arrived. Elizabeth and her mother fell ill while in detention with flu-like symptoms and hives, respectively. They were eventually released in February. “In my profession, I have seen many people break down in grief, but that image of Elizabeth’s father will stay with me forever,” said Tracy Xiong, a social worker with the school. “I watched him sit in his car, bury his head in his hand, and cry uncontrollably. Those are images you do not forget.”
    
    
16. – January 6, 2026 – According to two anonymous sources close to the White House, Trump dismissed Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for the Venezuelan presidency because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he had openly coveted. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” said one of the sources, who called Machado’s acceptance of the prize the “ultimate sin” in the eyes of the administration.
    
    
17. – January 6, 2026 – On the fifth anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, the White House published a new web page pushing false narratives. The web page blamed the Capitol Police for starting the riot, Democrats for failing to prevent it, and former Vice President Mike Pence for allowing the election results to be certified. It did not mention any of the police officers who were injured and falsely stated that “zero law enforcement officers lost their lives.” The page also called the rioters “innocent” and absolved the president of responsibility.
    
    
18. – January 6, 2026 – The Health Department froze $10 billion to five Democratic-led states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. The freeze, which comes after investigators identified welfare fraud schemes in Minnesota, will impact childcare subsidies, social services, and cash for low-income families. “Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch. Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes,” said Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Health Department. No evidence has suggested welfare fraud schemes in the other four states.
    
    
19. – January 7, 2026 – An ICE agent fatally shot Renée Nicole Good, 37, in Minneapolis, less than a mile from where police killed George Floyd in 2020. Videos of the shooting showed that Good’s Honda Pilot was partially blocking a one-lane residential street and that officers ordered her to get out of the car. One agent attempted to open the driver’s door and reach through the window. Another stepped in front of the vehicle. The SUV backed up, moved forward, and turned to leave. Agent Jonathan Ross then shot at Good and continued shooting as the vehicle moved past him, eventually crashing into a parked car. “One of the ICE agents tried to rip her door open, and another one got in front of the vehicle and then shouted ‘stop,’ before firing three times within a second of staying ‘stop,’” said Connor Janeksela, who witnessed the shooting. Trump falsely stated that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the officer,” and Kristi Noem said without evidence that Good was “stalking” officers and described her actions as “domestic terrorism.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz called those characterizations “bullshit” and “propaganda.” The shooting occurred during an immigration enforcement operation focused on Somalis that federal immigration officers called the “largest operation to date.” A poet, wife, and mother, Good was an American citizen and not the target of the operation.
    
    
    A Close Examination of the Shooting of Renée Good. (Star Tribune)
    
    
20. – January 7, 2026 – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced new dietary guidelines and unveiled a new, upside-down food pyramid emphasizing red meat, full-fat dairy, and whole foods. “Protein and healthy fats are essential and were wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines. We are ending the war on saturated fats,” said Kennedy. Nutrition experts agreed with the recommendations to eat more whole foods and less sugar, but criticized the emphasis on protein, which Americans are already eating in adequate amounts; the emphasis on saturated fats, which have been linked to heart disease, obesity, and diabetes; and various inconsistencies between the guidelines and pyramid. “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid that features red meat and saturated fat sources at the very top, as if that’s something to prioritize. It goes against decades and decades of evidence and research,” said Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert at Stanford University.
    
    
21. – January 7, 2026 – Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from sixty-six international organizations, agencies, and commissions. The executive order said the organizations “undermine America’s independence and waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective or hostile agendas." Thirty-one of the organizations were United Nations entities, including UN Women, the UN Population Fund, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the world’s most important climate treaty. By withdrawing from the UNFCCC, the US will no longer regularly report on its climate change policies or submit an annual inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions. Some experts called the unilateral withdrawal illegal.
    
    
22. – January 8, 2026 – Only a day after ICE killed Renée Good, Border Patrol shot two people—Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras—in a car in Portland, Oregon. The two were taken to the hospital for their injuries. DHS alleged without evidence that Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras were part of Tren de Aragua and that the agent had fired in self-defense. However, Portland Police Chief Bob Day would not verify that account and said that local police “do not know the facts of this case.” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners condemned the shooting and called on federal agents to leave. “What we can say now is enough is enough. The terror and violence ICE is causing in our neighborhoods must end now,” said the Board of Commissioners.
    
    
23. – January 8, 2026 – In a wide-ranging interview with New York Times reporters, Trump articulated a bold vision of his global power and restated his desire to own Greenland. When asked whether there were limits on his power as commander in chief, Trump responded, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” “I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.” When asked why he needed to acquire Greenland, Trump said, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
    
    
24. – January 9, 2026 – Parady La, 46, died in ICE Custody after being treated at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....